Dystopian
Dystopian fiction explores the social and political structure of an often futuristic society that is both repressive and controlling. These dystopian states often disguise themselves as a utopia with an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government. Excessive social control, repression of individual liberty and freedom and mass poverty are common themes.
Noted Works
Philip K Dick's Flow my tears, the policeman said
Philip K Dick's Do androids dream of electric sheep
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
Aldous Huxley's Brave new world
Books Reviewed
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![By the pricking of her thumbAdam Roberts]()
Science FictionBy the pricking of her thumb follows on from The Real Time Murders published last year, but can be read as a stand-alone novel. Set in a future where almost everyone spends all their time in a virtual world, private investigator Alma is caught up in another impossible murder. She has been asked to i...
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![Cage of SoulsAdrian Tchaikovsky]()
Science FictionA change of pace and approach from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Cage of Souls is a first-person past narrative, presented as a journal. This is a collection of writings from Stefan Advani, the chronicler of the last days of the last city of humankind – Shadrapar. Our story begins with Stefan being brought to...
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![Service ModelAdrian Tchaikovsky]()
Science FictionThe world will not die with a bang, but with a whimper. Similarly, it won’t be the robots that uprise and destroy humans, but our own incompetence when it comes to programming. Build and programme things correctly and everything should be fine, but this is modern life and doing things correctly seem...
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![World Running DownAl Hess]()
Science FictionIf Science Fiction is to be believed the only bright thing about the future will be the burning rays of the sun beaming down to burn our skin. The futures grim, the futures dystopian. However, sci fi also tells us that humans will do what it takes to survive. Despite inescapable heat and roving band...
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![Brave New WorldAldous Huxley]()
Science FictionBrave new world was written over 80 years ago; back in 1932 and describes London in the year 2540 - or 632 AF as the year is described in the book. The AF stands for "After Ford", meaning the American industrialist Henry Ford who has become something of a messianic figure in Huxley's World. It's bee...
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![The Night ShipAlex Woodroe]()
HorrorOne of the wonderful things about genre fiction is that an author does not have to explain what is going on if they do not want to. Science Fiction often goes into great detail trying to explain the science, but sometimes it just happens to be set on a remote alien planet – deal with it. In Alex Woo...
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![MomenticonAndrew Caldecott]()
Science FictionI adore science fiction, but it also frustrates me. I consider myself reasonably well read and clever enough to cope with most books, but occasionally a science fiction book comes along that I just cannot get my head around. Momenticon by Andrew Caldecott is a Bizzaro take on a dystopian future that...
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![CTRL+SAndy Briggs]()
Science FictionComputer Games used to be a child’s plaything, but as gamers grow older and are still playing this is no longer the case (if it ever was). As many gamers mature their reflexes deaden and will they one day even be able to pick up a conventional controller? Something like Virtual Reality may be the so...
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![In a Right StateBen Ellis]()
Science FictionIt's a fact that following the explosion of technology we now give away vast amounts of information freely and often unknowingly. Big companies have got smart at figuring out just how best to get such information. Many sell that data on without compunction. Fast forward to the year 2066 and big corp...
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![Broken BranchesBen Ellis]()
Science FictionIn the not too distant future, your social standing is based on the "purity" of your genes and the ability to trace your family through the "national family tree" genetic database. All men are sterile and fertility drugs are only given to state-sponsored couples whose genetic match are approved. Tho...
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![Golden StateBen Winters]()
Science FictionIn the wake of the 2016 US presidential election, a meme boiled up to the surface of our cultural dialogue about us having entered an age of “post-truth.” As the election showed us, we have arrived into a societal configuration, in which two major ideological groups do not just vote for different pa...
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![The Nobody PeopleBob Proehl]()
Science FictionModern life has highlighted the plight of The Other. People are marginalised for all sorts of reasons and from what I can tell it is more noticeable than ever. If you are different but can blend in with everybody else, would you keep it a secret or not? The Nobody People are hidden from view for now...
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![A Boy and his Dog at the End of the WorldC A Fletcher]()
Science FictionAs the world tears itself apart in front of us, there is something comforting about reading a good dystopian novel. If we are going to go out, at least it will not be due to zombies, bombs, viruses or all the bees dying out. Then again, it could be all of these together. Once the nuclear fallout has...
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![The Final OrchardC J Rivera]()
Science FictionWhen the apocalypse inevitably comes do you want to know about it? Would you like the chance to peer out of the window and see the world burning, perhaps you can make a run for the high ground? Another option is to live in pure ignorance underground, competing with your fellow residents for the perc...
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![Day ZeroC Robert Cargill]()
Science FictionAsimov’s ‘Three laws of Robotics’ have become synonymous with any book that contains robots. Nearly all these books will not allow their robots to hurt humans, but what happens if these rules broke? In C. Robert Cargill’s Day Zero the millions of robots that exist have full artificial intelligence...
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![The OffsetCalder Szewczak]()
Science FictionThere is one solution that would benefit our climate massively, but it is a bitter pill to swallow. Less humans. We are the cause of pretty much all the issues that the Earth is currently having and when we are gone, it will happily float around the solar system without us. A little bit grubbier, bu...
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![UltimartCarl Wilhoyte]()
Science FictionThere was a time in my life that I would sit down and read some Dystopian Fiction and not consider at all that it would happen in my lifetime, but all I need to do is some doomscrolling on my social medias to think that elements of Carl Wilhoyte’s Ultimart may not be long in our future. This is a bo...
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![Composite CreaturesCaroline Hardaker]()
Science FictionAlmost everything that we see daily would feel strange and alien to someone out of time. Show an Ancient Roman a modern carrot and they would ask why it was so large and orange. In Caroline Hardake r ’s Composite Cr eatures the world has changed a lot. The sky is constantly covered with thi...
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![The PhlebotomistChris Panatier]()
FantasyI find that a lot of my favourite science fiction starts off as a simple What If scenario. A talented author can take a seemingly simple idea and extrapolate from there. A simple difference to our current way of life can have huge implications. Before long an entire new world has been built from...
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![84KClaire North]()
Science FictionDespite repeated and continued efforts by the UK government (amongst others) of turning it into a reality, I still enjoy the odd dystopian fiction. More and more often though it does feel like things that will be rather than things that may . 84K is a good example. Set in a future where the inevitab...
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![Wake Up and Open Your EyesClay McLeod Chapman]()
HorrorHow do you like your horror novels? Are you someone who likes a spooky story, perhaps a little romance? Or do you like it horrific? A book that is uncomfortable, throwing images into your brain that you did not want to consider but cannot stop thinking about. Baby eating rats, killer clowns in the s...
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![EmbeddedDan Abnett]()
Science FictionTo the veteran journalist Lex Falk the planet Eighty Six looks as dull as it's unimaginative name would suggest, then trouble starts brewing with the local population and the media start getting the runaround from the military high command, his interest is suddenly roused. I have been looking forwar...
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![FiefdomDan Abnett]()
Science FictionDan Abnett and Nik Vincent have come together to tell a tale of a future that feels and sounds not like what one would envision, resembling more our distant past then our near future. Many readers will know of Dan Abnett and his prolific work with Marvel, Abaddon, Games Workshop, and his most succes...
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![First and OnlyDan Abnett]()
Science FictionIt has been nearly 20 years since I first read a Warhammer 40K novel, way before Games Workshops publishing company Black Library was formed. I was and always will be a big fan of anything Games Workshop related, spending a vast amount of my formative years playing a myriad number of games and paint...
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![FlashbackDan Simmons]()
Science FictionAmerica of 2036 is a wasteland in economic ruin, plagued by Terrorism and extreme acts of violence. Society escapes from this harsh reality by numbing itself on the drug Flashback - a euphoric yet cripplingly addictive drug that allows its users to re-visit their happier, past experiences. It's also...
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![AuroraDavid Koepp]()
Science FictionReading about a dystopia is not as farfetched as it was once as we are living through a couple of ongoing ones as I write, but there is always space for a little more terror to add to the reality. What about a situation that is eerily possible? The sun belches out radiation daily and according to Da...
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![Night TrainDavid Quantick]()
Science FictionI am not a big fan of train travel. The route I take is usually into London on a packed train. I have been made to suffer by standing all the way and having no access to the t oilets. I have considered putting this into prose form in a science fiction thriller but needing the loo and having sore f...
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![Daylight on Iron MountainDavid Wingrove]()
Science FictionDaylight on Iron Mountain is the second book in David Wingrove's epic re-imagining of his Chung Kuo series and follows on from the events in the incredible novel Son of Heaven , I seriously recommend you read that novel first. Although we still have the characters of Jack, Mary and their family - wh...
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![Son of HeavenDavid Wingrove]()
Science FictionThe year is 2065 and two decades have passed since civilisation in the west was destroyed by economic collapse. In the UK no central government exists and people survive in broken pockets of civility - small communities who have banded together to build some semblance of order amid the chaos. In the...
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![Radio LifeDerek B Miller]()
Science FictionWhat do we expect from the future? I consider myself a half glass full type of person, but even my positivity has taken a battering in the past few years. A world buried under a sea of sand sounds like it may be better in some circumstances. If we do find ourselves roaming a desolate future what w...
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![After AtlasEmma Newman]()
Science FictionAfter Atlas is Newman’s follow up to her science fiction debut, Planetfall . This story is not a sequel, instead it focuses on our future Earth, that has been left behind by the colonists on the Atlas mission. This aftermath is the setting for a murder mystery plot involving a selection of those lef...
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![HellSansEver Dundas]()
Science FictionTypography has a larger role in your life than you may think. It is important to get the right font in the right place. No one wants to have Beware of the Cliff written in Comic Sans. Advertisers spend millions on typefaces to make a brand instantly recognisable. All these things are noble pursuits,...
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![Hellstrom's HiveFrank Herbert]()
Science FictionWhen anyone mentions the name Frank Herbert most people will instantly think of Dune, a novel that has achieved an incredible success but also overshadowed anything else Herbert created since (Dune was only his second published full novel). It must have been a frustration that none of his works afte...
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![DefenderGX Todd]()
Science FictionIn the dark future of Defender , the majority of the worlds population have died. Killed by themselves and others who were listening to voices steering their horrific actions. Those who survived live in a hostile environment, unable to trust strangers and fighting over limited resources. On a long d...
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![The Miracle InspectorHelen Smith]()
Science FictionThe Miracle Inspector is a science fiction novel by Helen Smith. England is now a partitioned country with the capital an oppressive place where poetry has been banned, schools are shut and women no longer allowed to work outside of the home. Lucas and Angela decide to try and escape the confining r...
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![LeechHiron Ennes]()
HorrorWe have all come to loath the Flu virus and its even worse cousin, but how are we as humans to prevent the spread of life? It will find a way. For mammals it is making babies, for a virus it is infiltrating a host and multiplying, then moving onto the next host. The virus does not care that it destr...
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![ExtremophileIan Green]()
Science FictionCyberpunk has always been an interesting mash up of ideas, taking the science fiction forward ideas of technology and giving it a gritty edge. Mixing the equivalent of early 80s synth with the raw punk that preceded it in a giant science fiction blender sounds like chaos, but both have origins of ri...
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![The Glass BoxJ Michael Straczynski]()
General FictionSome of the best speculative fiction starts with an idea that is not far removed from the normal, a simple nudge to reality can lead to many places. In the case of J. Michael Straczynski’s The Glass Box , this place is a psychiatric hospital. The reason for being sent there? New government legislati...
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![The Drowning EarthJack D Mclean]()
Science FictionI think the pessimistic among us see a future of raised water levels and the UK losing plenty of its coastal land and anything close to our rivers. However, even the most resigned will not have imagined the world that Martin Mulligan and Jack D. McLean have created in The Drowning Earth . Not only a...
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![Kings of a Dead WorldJamie Mollart]()
Science FictionThere are two ways that you can view the future. We are all doomed, or we will somehow save ourselves. The optimistic The Day the Earth Stood Still way of thinking is that humans will only get around to do something when we are really in a pickle. World ending disaster will be averted at the last...
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![Fork in the Road to ApocalypseJeff Gonsalves]()
Science FictionFork in the Road to Apocalypse is the second volume in the Subnorms, written by Jeff Gonsalves. It's the middle of the 21st Century and much of the World's population have seen their genetic makeup mutated by insidious viruses and powerful radiation. A sub species of human has developed from these g...
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![DebrisJo Anderton]()
Science FictionTanyana has the innate talent to manipulate the very particles that hold matter together, as one of the most skilled pionners in a far-future society she can craft almost anything with just her concentration. An accident however brings her whole life crashing down and she is virtually cast out of th...
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![Inish CarraigJo Zebedee]()
Science FictionA dystopian future novel set in Belfast after an alien invasion is a premise that immediately appeals and suggests a whole host of imaginative ideas. Inish Carraig is the second book from Jo Zebedee and sets humanity as a conquered plaything between two spacefaring alien civilisations; the Zelotyr a...
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![Judge Dredd: AmericaJohn Wagner]()
Science FictionGrowing up my group of friends was obsessed with America and all wanted to move there. They had all been taken in by the glossy American films and TV shows that suggested that even if you were unemployed, you would own a swanky loft apartment. I had relatives who live there and was far more aware...
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![Dredd vs DeathJohn Wagner]()
Science FictionI read and listen to books in all formats, but still prefer the feel of paper in my hand. Audiobooks are great for the commute, but they are just not pacy enough for me, I read quickly, and a narrator often seems to go in slow motion even at 1.5 speed. 2000AD and Penguin Audio must know my brain as...
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![AmatkaKarin Tidbeck]()
Science FictionKarin Tidbeck has written a number of short-stories, her first english Language collection (firmly rooted in Weird Fiction ), Jagannath , was nominated for the World Fantasy award and short-listed for the James Tiptree Junior award. It also received wide-spread critical acclaim. Amatka is her first...
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![AwakenedLaura Elliott]()
Science FictionScience has taken humans to amazing places, prolonged our lives, made living better, but it has also created great harm. Have some diseases been developed in a lab then released, on purpose or by accident? Perhaps legitimate research led to tragic mistakes. In the world of Laura Elliott’s Awakened ,...
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![Sea of DreamsLiu Cixin]()
Science FictionI may be biased, but I think that science fiction is the greatest of genres because you can explore so many avenues. I have read many a future dystopian that have explored human’s obsession with science or lack of care with climate change. What I have never read is a science fiction book that explor...
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![For the Benefit of MankindLiu Cixin]()
Science FictionThe Trolley Problem is an interesting mental exercise that asks you would you let one person die to save many? To do so you would have to divert the trolley from the path of the five and be culpable for it hitting the one. In theory it makes sense, the many not the few, but could you really pull tha...
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![Infinity GateM R Carey]()
Science FictionThere is a reason that you should avoid tackling the multiverse in a story as the very nature of them means that the possibilities are infinite. Every decision ever made split off to make two different pathways and so on. A story that spans multiple Earths will have to pick which ones to visit. Do y...
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![BurrowedMary Baader Kaley]()
Science FictionWhen the apocalypse happens, science fiction has taught us that some of us will run below and others will be left on the surface. Pick a side. Down below could be a Fallout or Wool situation, better than being on the surface, dead or a mutant. Up above could be The Time Machine or Mary Baader Kaley’...
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![Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle RockMaud Woolf]()
Science FictionWouldn’t it be great to be in more than one place at once? Rather than having to do all those boring jobs you could make a version of yourself to do it for you, leaving time for you to do what you really want, like playing too many computer games or reading too many books. Before you know it, you ma...
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![Jennifer GovernmentMax Barry]()
Science FictionSimply put this is a witty outlook on modern life and the consumerists of today. It does bare great similarities with the classic Orwell novel but where that can be quite dark and bleak this novel, although fatalistic somewhat is rather funny. The characters in the novel all having surnames from the...
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![RedsightMeredith Mooring]()
Science FictionThere are space books and then there are Space Operas. What makes a good Space Opera is a sense of scale – the big and the small. Characters making decisions that define the entire Universe, but also their place in the local power struggle. Who will rule, which family? Which sect? Which Goddess? Red...
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![The Price of SafetyMichael C. Bland]()
Science FictionWhat would you do to protect those that you love? What is The Price of Safety ? This is a question that Michael C. Bland poses in the first of a trilogy set in a troubling future. It is a story about a genius, but also a family man whose inventions gets them all into danger. At what point do you dec...
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![The Price of FreedomMichael C. Bland]()
Science FictionAfter discovering what The Price of Safety and The Price of Rebellion are in the first two outings in Michael C Bland’s dystopian trilogy, we finally get to see what The Price of Freedom is in this final outing. In a world in which everyone has been rendered blind unless they wear technology, you ca...
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![Queen of BabylonMichael Ferris Gibson]()
Science FictionTwins have always had a mystery around them. Two people brought up so closely together that they have their own language. In Michael Ferris Gibson and Imani Josey’s Babylon Twin series, the language that the twins use is called the Twinkling, a speech so intuitive that only they can understand it. I...
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![A Rebel's History of MarsNadia Afifi]()
Science FictionWhen we have finally managed to destroy Earth, some of us may already be living on Mars. If you stay inside the domes, I hear it can be quite pleasant. However, what happens when we start to destroy Mars? The issue with all these planets is not the landscape or the lack of oxygen, it is the fact tha...
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![Alpha OmegaNicholas Bowling]()
Science FictionIf you read enough Near Future fiction you will start to see a trend. The future is not orange at all but bleak and a little depressing. It could be giant robots, aliens or the undead. There always seems to be something around the corner that is more dystopian than utopian. I can take all the UFOs...
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![The Windup GirlPaolo Bacigalupi]()
Science FictionThe Windup Girl is the award winning dystopian vision by Paolo Bacigalupi. Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's calorie representative in Thailand. Under cover as a factory worker he combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs long thought to be extinct. There he meets the Windup Gir...
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![Echo CyclePatrick Edwards]()
Science FictionAbove all genres, science fiction is my favourite. Why? Because anything can happen. You can have epic space battles between alien races you cannot pronounce or go in the other direction and create a subtle alternative reality where words have the power to kill. Ideas run the entire gamete and they...
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![The ActualityPaul Braddon]()
Science FictionI sometimes like to think about a singular change to the world and how it would affect the future. It says a lot about me that in most cases my thoughts end up at dystopia. Humans are always going to end at some point, I was just hoping that it would be a few years after I had gone. I a...
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![Survivor SongPaul Tremblay]()
HorrorReleasing a book about a pandemic during the middle of a real pandemic is a bold move but one that Paul Tremblay has taken. Although there are some parallels between what is happening in the world today and those within the pages of Survivor Song , they are not enough to make the book off put...
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![A Scanner DarklyPhilip K Dick]()
Science FictionA Scanner Darkly is the only Philip K Dick novel that I have been the slightest bit reluctant to read so far - to say I am not a fan of drugs would be a vast understatement and Scanner is PKD's exploration into drugs. My youngest brother has waxed lyrical on a number of occasions about the novel tho...
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![Do Androids Dream of Electric SheepPhilip K Dick]()
Science FictionDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the classic novel that became the film Blade Runner. Written by legendary award winning author Philip K Dick. The aftermath of the World War Terminus sees a devastated Earth with severe radioactive fallout and most of nature destroyed. Many of the survivors have...
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![Flow my tears, the policeman saidPhilip K Dick]()
Science FictionFlow my tears, the policeman said is a science fiction novel by the legendary award winning author Philip K Dick, has been nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards and won the 1975 John W Campbell Award for the best science fiction novel of the year. Jason Taverner is a TV idol, singer and host and...
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![Dark LullabyPolly Ho-Yen]()
Science FictionThey all tell you that having children is not easy, but nothing prepared us for the first six weeks of having a defenceless little t y ke in the house. You may have read the books, been to a few classes or asked r elatives and friends, but when it comes down to it, this is all on your shoulders al...
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![The Siege of Burning GrassPremee Mohamed]()
Science FictionScience Fiction can be upbeat and utopian or downbeat and dystopian. The current trend is to focus on the negatives, but even these books have a glint of hope in them. When it comes to dystopian visions of the future, they do not come much more intense than Premee Mohamed’s The Siege of Burning Gras...
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![PomegranatesPriya Sharma]()
Science FictionIn the aftermath of the global pandemic, there is a darkness to the world that has yet to retreat. The way in which writers approach their craft in this moment is crucial. Some are electing to ignore it in the stories that they create, whilst others embrace the context directly in their work. In gen...
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![VagabonderR T Coleman]()
Science FictionScience Fiction is one of the best genres because you can explore subjects via a prism of the future. Writing a book about how we treat others does not have to be told via a historic story, or the present, you can look far to the future and draw parallels between that world and ours. What would happ...
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![Twenty Five to LifeR. W. W. Greene]()
Science FictionDystopian fiction has been becoming increasingly popular in recent years, probably because many of us can see the tell-tale signs of it coming along the tracks in real life. This is a depressing thought, but one worth exploring. How will humans continue to survive on a planet they are poisoning? Som...
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![Fahrenheit 451Ray Bradbury]()
Science FictionFahrenheit 451 is a science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury which depicts a dystopian future society where books that have any intellectual value are banned and destroyed where-ever they are found. With a Hedonistic and lawless society, the highest achievement for any individual is happiness and the m...
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![The Long WalkRichard Bachman]()
HorrorReview by Arron Clegg. Wow, what a novel. Not my first time for reading it, but I just seemed to enjoy it even more this time around. Now, most of you out there are already aware that Richard Bachman was a pen name for Stephen King. He chose to do this purely because in his early days, even as today...
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![The Last Gifts of the UniverseRiley August]()
Science FictionSubgenres come and go and one that I have recently been enjoying is ‘Cosy Fantasy,’ what does that mean? Basically, fantasy with some of the trepidation taken out, a chance to get to know the characters and enjoy a fantasy setting in peace. Riley August’s The Last Gifts of the Universe opens my worl...
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![The NurseryRoark Arnett]()
Science FictionScience Fiction writers love a dystopia, there are so many ways that it could all go wrong. Overpopulation is one. It not a pleasant thing to think about, but we already use too many of the world’s finite resources and as the population grows, this is going to get even worse. In The Nursery by Roark...
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![Titan HoppersRob J Hayes]()
Science FictionHumanity is a parasite sucking the recourses from the Earth until there are no more. Like a remora attached to the undercarriage of a shark, humans will one day need find a new host. The alternative is to change our ways, but that does not seem likely. Titan Hoppers by Rob J Hayes follows a flotilla...
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![Heart of the AssassinRobert Ferrigno]()
Science FictionThe Butterfly Effect is a device used to explore alternative versions of our world. The simple action of a time travellers going back to the time of the dinosaurs and standing on a butterfly would alter everything that followed, ripples expanding from that one point. Robert Ferrigno decided to exp...
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![The Price of Memory and Other StoriesSally Mcbride]()
Science FictionI do enjoy a set of short stories. There are typically two types that you can get, a collection, or a theme. The Price of Memories and Other Stories by Sally McBride is a classic style collection of an author’s works brought together over years into a curated whole. Are there themes that imbue the s...
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![Haunted FuturesSalome Jones]()
Science FictionHaunted Futures is a collection presenting the uncertain future in many guises. Originally funded as part of a kickstarter campaign and edited by Salome Jones it features short stories from authors including Warren Ellis, Jeff Noon, Tricia Sullivan and SL Huang (amongst others). The brief these auth...
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![The Carhullan ArmySarah Hall]()
Science FictionThe Carhullan Army is a dystopian science fiction novel set in an around the cumbrian fells, written by Sarah Hall. With much of Britain underwater due to a biblical level of flooding, the surviving population exist in concentrated pockets and ruled by the rather sinister sounding "Authority". While...
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![A Better WorldSarah Langan]()
HorrorA person brings a piece of themselves with them when they read a book. Your background, beliefs and current situation can all inform the story. There are books where it does not really matter who you are, but some books will hit home harder for those who feel a connection. A Better World by Sarah La...
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![Daughters of the Forgotten LightSean Grigsby]()
Science FictionDaughters of the Forgotten Light is set in a deep space penal colony called Oubliette. Floating in space, it's home to the most savage criminals and other members of the population Earth no longer wants. To survive on Oubiette you need to join a gang and Lena "Horror" Horowitz leads the Daughters of...
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![Annie BotSierra Greer]()
Science FictionI picked this book up after learning about it being short-listed and eventually winning the Arthur C Clarke Award . It's proof of not judging a book by its cover because I'd have completely passed it by sitting on a table, with its shockingly bright pink swirlyness and quote by Sheena Patel that say...
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![SaturnaliaStephanie Feldman]()
HorrorWhat happens when the world ends? Do we as a species rally together to save the day at the last possible moment, or do we fiddle whilst Rome burns? If recent history has shown us nothing else, the rich will party, and the poor will die. Nothing new there then. Stephanie Feldman does not see the tren...
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![JubileeStephen K. Stanford]()
Science FictionWhat made people think that the middle of the desert was the right place to build a town like Los Vegas where people from around the world flock to get their vice on? It was the fact that it was in the middle of nowhere, safe from prying eyes and it was desperate to for people to visit. There should...
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![The SilencedStephen Lloyd Jones]()
Science FictionMallory Grace had been successfully hiding out in London for some time until she met Obadiah in a seemingly random encounter. Now she's just had to kill someone and if she wants to survive the next few hours she'll probably have to kill again. To survive the night she'll need a miracle. Obadiah Maci...
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![BrokenSusan J Bigelow]()
Science FictionBroken is a speculative fiction novel by Susan J Bigelow. When Broken lost her ability to fly, she thought she was finished with being an extrahuman, a superhero. Then the world around her started to break apart and the mysterious teenager Michael found her, bringing with him the promise of rebirth...
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![State of MindSven Michael Davison]()
Science FictionState of Mind is a post-cyberpunk science fiction thriller by Sven Michael Davison. In the year 2030 you can eat all you want, take drugs and drink as much as you want without any negative side effects, you can call a friend, surf the web, listen to music, watch a film or even play a game without to...
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![In the Lives of PuppetsT J Klune]()
Science FictionI am all for a retelling of a classic story, but some of them are not that close to the source material. Pinocchio is having a renaissance with two recent film adaptations and now a new cyber future take in T J Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets . I can see a puppet like creature, something resembling...
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![Clockwork BoysT Kingfisher]()
FantasyThe fantasy genre has the reputation of producing books big enough that you could use as a casual seat, trilogies that you could line up, throw some cushions on top and make into a settee. It does not have to be this way and T Kingfisher has certainly bucked the trend with Clockwork Boys, which come...
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![Sunshine RepublicTed Brownstein]()
Science FictionSunshine Republic is a dystopian science fiction novel by Ted Brownstein. It's the year 2130 and the newly independent Republic of Florida is deeply divided over the use of technology, the Futurist party believe that their society could be vastly improved by the use of cheap, abundant robot labour a...
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![Captain Marvel: Liberation RunTess Sharpe]()
Science FictionIt is not hard to see where Marvel Studios get all their ideas from as they sit upon a rich heritage of characters and storylines that will take decades to exhaust. I am somewhat of an old school Marvel fan and know the classic runs. Therefore, the newer creations flummox me. Captain Marvel is more...
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![Perilous TimesThomas D Lee]()
FantasyI love an Arthurian Legend retelling, Perilous Times by Thomas D Lee is not even the first one that I have read this year, but it shows how flexible authors can be with Old King Arty. Lee does not retell the tales of yore but extrapolates into the present and the future. When Arthur was buried, he w...
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![Womb CityTlotlo Tsamaase]()
Science FictionAt its best science fiction can be a prism to view the current world’s ills in a more palatable manner. Reading about the destruction of our world in a dystopian future feels one step removed from simply looking out of the window. Like environmental catastrophe, some themes are too powerful to go un...
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![The Wolves of WinterTyrell Johnson]()
FantasyOn the surface, this post-apocalyptic tale of infection, nuclear fallout and scattered, savage humanity is no different from the many others that have gone before it. But what saves it from being just another drop in the great maelstrom of dystopian novels is the author’s taught and affecting story-...
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![System PreferenceUgo Bienvenu]()
Science FictionAs a Librarian I deal regularly with some of the topics raised in Ugo Bienvenu’s System Preference . I do not have firsthand experience of a robot bringing up my children, but I do know about data; what needs to be stored and what needs to be deleted. Do we just keep it all in the hopes that we can...
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![AllegiantVeronica Roth]()
Science FictionI will be honest—I was not thrilled about the idea of thinking about this book again in order to write a review. I was so bothered by the end of this series that I felt depressed about it for a week after I finished the novel. I loved Divergent. I thought that Insurgent was a pretty strong follow-up...
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![DivergentVeronica Roth]()
Science FictionDivergent is the kind of book I stay awake reading until 4am. It gripped me and didn’t let go, staying with me when I closed the book with a rush of adrenaline and a serious hankering for its sequel. The novel takes place in Tris Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, where society is divided into five fa...
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![InsurgentVeronica Roth]()
Science FictionIn Insurgent, we rejoin Tris Prior as she and the friends and family she has left run to Amity (the kindness faction). Throughout the novel, she must continue trying to save those she loves—and herself—while grappling with grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love. War looms as...
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![The Dark CourtVyvyan Evans]()
Science FictionI imagine there is a dial that an author has when they are writing their book, it spans the gamut of subtle to outrageous. Where do you decide to place your story? Should you keep it lowkey, writing about a world like our own, but with a small tweak? Or do you embrace all that science fiction has to...
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![Silicon ManWilliam Massa]()
Science FictionHorror author William Massa has been terrifying me since I first watched saw the film he scripted— Return to the House on Haunted Hill . Since then, I have ploughed through his writings, recently reading his hybrid cyberpunk-android-civil-rights-commentary-action-packed-science-fiction-novel Silicon...
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![A Planet for RentYoss]()
Science FictionYoss is one of the most controversial and successful of Cuba's science fiction writers. As well known for his rock-and-roll style as he is for his portrait of Cuba under Communism, his work is modern, dynamic and yet deep and thoughtful. A Planet for Rent is set in the near future where Earth, wrack...
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